Education: Academic Racketeers

In a popular U.S. magazine, the young Colombian spied an ad that roused his dreams. The American correspondence school promised a radio and electronics course, equipment to study with. To raise tuition, the boy’s father sold the family house. Off went his precious pesos—and the school was never heard from. In Bogotá, the U.S. consul nodded wearily as the victims denounced the “wicked and harmful” deception.†

Last week the American Council on Education made an angry, 100-page attack on U.S. “diploma mills,” which have run a carefree con game around the globe for more than a century. Trouble is that the mills are blossoming as never before. At least 200 crooked schools in 37 states, the council reported, are raking in $75 million from 750,000 victims a year. California alone may have 100 such schools. A top West German investigator of academic frauds used to get 2,000 complaints annually about U.S. diploma mills. Now he gets 6,000, and calls the mills “the largest such operation in the world.”

Hooked. The pickings are fat because the U.S. has no national control of education, and sparse state control (only 18 states and the District of Columbia regulate degree giving). In one of 13 states that tolerate “nonprofit” colleges without a charter or license, the typical mill’s campus is a small-town post-office box. For $150 and up, the mill sells such degrees as Doctor of Divinity in Metaphysics, Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, “Master Herbalsits” (sic). The signatories are such lustrous personages as “Archbishop John I.”

Worst aspect is that more and more of the victims are gullible citizens of underdeveloped countries. Thirsting for status-by-schooling, they assume that any U.S. school advertising itself abroad is Government-approved. They save their coppers, lunge at the bait and get hooked. Result: the prestige of genuine U.S. degrees is falling; some countries refuse to recognize any but those of famed institutions.

Housecleaning? One way to nail the schools is to insist on residence requirements; the proprietors would run if any student showed up to meet his teachers. New York and Arkansas, which require one year of residence for a correspondence-school degree, are little plagued by the problem. In contrast, easygoing Colorado, Delaware and Indiana are hangouts for fake schools with a thriving trade in India, Pakistan, Burma and Egypt.

For a real housecleaning, the A.C.E. urged last week, every state should drastically boost standards for licensing and degree granting. Already the Council of State Governments has shown “willingness to proceed immediately toward uniform state legislation.” Congress might also plug interstate and international loopholes with new laws, make sure that U.S. Foreign Service officers get full dossiers on academic racketeers. “Through such solidly founded cooperation,” the A.C.E. concluded, “there is a real chance that American degree mills can be eliminated.”

†Legitimate U.S. correspondence schools belong to the National Home Study Council (1420 New York Ave., N.W., Washington 5, D.C.), whose 58 members maintain scrupulous standards, enroll 1,000,000 students yearly.